


it's a avocado, thanks

by ShrapnelChan



Series: Be careful, children, that's a lot of classic vines [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Explicit Language, Falling In Love, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Vines, but he doesn't realize it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:55:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24551188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShrapnelChan/pseuds/ShrapnelChan
Summary: "He recognizes some of the quotes from various videos, remembers Raihan and Piers and Gordie and Milo and Nessa quoting them out of context at parties and get-togethers hosted by League members to allow them to unwind away from the stress of sponsors and fans and endless attention."Leon is introduced to ZigZag videos by Hop and Victor.AKA My love letter to vine, featuring Leon slowly falling in love and quietly taking a stand for himself. rated M rather than T only because of the initial video quoted and the Lil Jon lyrics within that video lmao
Relationships: Dande | Leon/Kibana | Raihan
Series: Be careful, children, that's a lot of classic vines [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809511
Comments: 17
Kudos: 90





	it's a avocado, thanks

**Author's Note:**

> this all started because I rewatched one (1) internet video and realized that it would literally be what Raihan would post. The story bloomed on its own from there.  
> ZigZag is a weird mishmash of Vine and TikTok that I made up to be the Pokemon universe equivalent. RIP Vine, we miss you.  
> 

“Victor! Did you see Raihan’s newest ZigZag?”

Leon’s ears perk up as he hears Hop’s shout from the top of the stairs the moment their front door opens to allow the bright morning sun into the entryway. The call is followed by a thunderous crash of feet against the steps as Hop skips two steps at a time towards his friend with Wooloo hot on his heels.

“No? When did he post, this morning?”

“Yep! It’s bril, I was _cackling_ , mate.”

Hop had, indeed, been heard cackling with laughter from his room when Leon was heading downstairs earlier. He didn’t get a chance to visit home often, and when he did, he usually liked to soak in what his family had to share with him, whether that was stories of Hop and his best friend’s explorations around Postwick and Wedgehurst, or simply listening to his mum’s soft voice and Hop’s laughter. He basked in their warmth, etching the memories in his brain like the carvings on a Runerigus, stowing it away to remember during long months in Wyndon away from them. So, he had left Hop to his laughter with a soft smile, imprinting the sound on his memory as he busied himself making coffee. He hadn’t, however, expected his rival to be the cause of his brother’s joy.

_And why did that make a pang of longing go through his chest, the thought of his rival and his brother getting along so well, a dinner table surrounded by Hop’s laughter and his mother’s warm eyes_ _and Raihan’s sharp, toothy grin_ –

Leon is disrupted from his musings by the scuffle of teenage boys entering the family room, only to come to a sudden stop when they realize Leon is sitting there on the couch.

Hop grins sheepishly. “Sorry, Lee, didn’t mean to disturb you working—”

Leon waves off his brother’s apology as he takes a sip from his mug. “Don’t worry about it, Hopscotch. I’m here on vacation, no working, remember? Make as much noise as you want, just don’t wake Mum too early.”

Hop’s smile brightens. “We were gonna cast our phones to the telly while we eat breakfast, if you wanna join us.”

Leon smiles, eyes crinkling over the edge of his coffee mug, and he nods in agreement. The two boys fly towards the kitchen in a flurry of gangly limbs they’ve yet to grow into. Leon relocates to the armchair and sits and listens as they bicker lightheartedly about the proper ingredients to add to make the perfect scrambled eggs. He quietly soaks it all up: the smells of melting butter and slightly burnt toast, the sharp sizzle of cold eggs hitting hot pan, the murmur of voices and laughter echoing through the kitchen and down the hall. If he listens carefully he can just make out the faint sounds of his mum starting to go about her morning routine intermingling with his grandfather’s snores from upstairs.

The boys return with a breakfast spread fit for a king (or a champion) and settle themselves into the couch Leon had vacated. Hop slides a bowl of eggs across to Leon while Victor fiddles with his phone, the Rotom inside buzzing excitedly.

The video starts off innocuously enough. Raihan is lip-syncing, some weird song about cooking by the book, while dancing around in a pink apron with a whisk and a wooden spoon in hand. About 15 seconds into the video, however, a second voice joins in and the song shifts into a rap with a loud, “Now break it down, bitch!” while Raihan shifts from cute to club-style dancing. Leon nearly spits his coffee across the room and he stares, sputtering and transfixed, as Raihan twerks at the camera and licks the whisk, all the while lip-syncing along to the no-longer-cutesy lyrics.

_…did this song really just say ‘now pack that pussy, she’s a motherfucker’??????_

The video ends abruptly and Hop and Victor are cackling on the couch, falling into each other as they laugh. Leon stares in shock at the replay button on the video, shoulders shaking minutely with a few breathless chuckles, and all he can think about is the movement of Raihan’s hips, his tongue scraping past sharp canines as he grins and licks at a spoon and throws flour around the kitchen. He blinks out of his reverie when Victor taps at the phone to replay the video, and this time Leon can see plainly the humor of the video beyond his rival’s swinging hips and fiery eye contact with the camera. He dissolves into laughter at the dichotomy while Hop and Victor howl with laughter, falling off the couch together.

“What… what app even is this?” Leon manages between chuckles. Hop looks up, breathless but still managing a dramatic, over-the-top scandalized look.

“What? It’s ZigZag! It’s just like PokéGram, but it’s video-focused. So many memes have been coming from it.”

Leon smiles sadly at Hop. “I haven’t had much time for memes lately, sorry Hopscotch.”

Hop sighs, sadness drooping his shoulders, and Victor clutches his chest in mock pain. “It hurts, truly it does, that one so well known in the media is so clueless about memes,” Victor says.

“Well,” Hop says with a grin, squaring his shoulders, “we’ll just have to catch you up while you’re here!” With that, he reaches for Victor’s Rotom phone and queues up a new video, this one a ZigZag compilation. Some of the videos feature Raihan, some don’t. Some include the other gym leaders, some are of random people from throughout the region. Some are clearly from outside of the region. Leon is enraptured.

He’ll never tell Hop that Rose has, technically, forbidden him from social media. It’s ostensibly so that his accounts can be professionally run, and to allow him more time for training and working with sponsors, but what it has truly done is drive a rift between Leon and Hop. Not a purposeful one, not one that they cannot work around. But one that has kept him from knowing and understanding his little brother’s interests, and beyond that, the interests and subtle subcultural references of his friends. He recognizes some of the quotes from various videos, remembers Raihan and Piers and Gordie and Milo and Nessa quoting them out of context at parties and get-togethers hosted by League members to allow them to unwind away from the stress of sponsors and fans and endless attention.

He remembers Raihan sitting next to him on Nessa’s couch, everyone a couple beers in and Nessa reading out the cards she had been passed in their latest round of Cards Against Pokémon, Raihan humming and mumbling about “a potato flew around my room before you came, excuse the mess it made,” only to cut himself off with a chuckle at the card combination Nessa had just read. He laughs soundly at the video of Piers playing a simple tune on his keyboard before Gordie shouts, “SAIL” and brings his foot up to the precarious setup, the video ending on a blur of equipment falling and the two laughing. The memories he has so earnestly fought to remember as clear as possible fall into a comfortable context and rise to the surface plain as day while the compilation plays on.

Gordie appears on the screen, asking Piers for some water, stating loudly he likes “your style, bro” when he then assumes it’s vodka at Pier’s insistence it is not water, and Piers snarking right back that “it’s vinegar, _pussy_ ,” with a sharp grin. Piers and Raihan joke around in Turffield, a challenge from Raihan prompting Piers to stretch and then launch into a backflip, to which Raihan calls out, “Yeah, but that backflip, tho,” while Milo and Bea whoop and cheer from the barbeque. A video plays of Piers and Raihan and Gordie each standing up through the sunroof in what Leon recognizes as Rose and Oleana’s official company car, singing with pure joy in their eyes about being “bagel boys with cream cheese”. Gordie, upon hearing a story about how Milo’s brother met his husband, deadpans, “Oh Arceus, they were roommates,” eliciting snorts of laughter from Milo.

A cornfield stretches across the telly screen with Milo narrating, stating that “this is a nice cornfield.” Piers, holding a pan and a banging on it with a spoon, marches across Nessa’s backyard with high-kicked knees while Nessa and Bea positively cry with laughter and reach for the volume on the speaker to turn up the quick-worded song louder. Gordie, Raihan, and Piers, wrapped tight in blankets and sunglasses and facing the camera with smiles barely holding back their laughter, shift back and forth on camera while a bouncy song plays. Raihan, in the midst of a League meeting, mumbles “look at this graph” under his breath while Piers snorts and Gordie dissolves into laughter, Oleana looking on unimpressed as she continues to motion to the PowerPoint projected next to her.

How much of this has he missed? How much has Rose kept him from knowing about his coworkers, his friends? Leon feels lost. He feels as though there is this entire secret culture that has been kept from him. The videos keep playing, Hop and Victor delving into conversation and occasionally snickering and laughing at various ZigZags. Leon pulls out his phone, eyes glued to the telly where Gordie, completely buried in sand, declares himself to be the sand guardian, while Raihan, shirtless and glittering with sweat and salt and seawater, smacks a hand against the side of the sand pile with a soft _thunk_ , proclaiming that “Kyogre quivers before him!” He keeps watching the videos, only looking down as he quietly downloads a few of the more popular social media apps and makes accounts with random names: Lombre4Life58, TsarQu33na, various things that don’t relate to him or his team or his friends at all. He smiles up at Hop and Victor, now bickering amicably over the best strategy to take down a swooping Rookidee, and follows Raihan and the others.

What Rose doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

And if Leon spends a solid two hours in his room that night going through Raihan’s ZigZag feed, earbuds in and eyes lingering on the glint of too-sharp canines and the splay of long fingers as Raihan flips his hand around while he narrates, well. That’s Leon’s business.

**Author's Note:**

> Raihan's "cooking by the book" video is [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQwz8TYNeEY).  
> The rest of the vines referenced are as follows:  
> [a potato flew](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLTZPK8HhFI) [around my room](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-chyWp3mPk) | [SAIL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHp9QUCwzJc) | [vodka, i like your style, bro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJHcduAYfLQ) | [yeah but that backflip tho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Sm3urKCT0) | [bagel boys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elRVzaZuhzo) | [and they were roommates](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZuydxEUpFM) | [this is a nice cornfield](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F80yIJAILU&feature=youtu.be) | [annie are you okay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR1zHdFN8A4) | [all around the world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9J6HcSpTbU) | [look at this graph](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NkkZJHova4) | [i am the sand guardian guardian of the sand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyrg_nLywUQ)
> 
> I also took great inspiration from the following vine compilations and swsh vine redraws: [xxx](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unNRoBRzgS0) [xxx](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQcCHElmqk)
> 
> ETA 06.12.2020: HOW COULD I FORGET TO LINK TO THE TITULAR VINE HOLY SHIT: [it's a avocado, thanks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG2-y5Yf1Oo)


End file.
